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Talk:All About : Princess Anna/@comment-74.99.65.62-20170621022837
=Completely Ordinary Anna of Arendelle= Anika April 24, 2014Analysis There are two Disney Princesses in Frozen and picking one over the other is an easy trap to fall into. Who do you like more: Gwen or Mary Jane? Sansa or Arya? Cosette or Eponine? Serena or Blair? Elsa or Anna? My answer is almost always both and I don’t think I’m alone. But the discussion is everywhere and while it’s not confined to female characters (Edward or Jacob? Gale or Peeta? Thor or Loki?) it’s not unfair to say if there are two women in a story the conversation, by media and fans alike, pits them against each other. And in regards to Frozen, Elsa is winning. And fair enough: she gets the transformation, she gets the feminist manifesto, she doesn’t have a love interest, she is powerful and has power. Little girls everywhere belting out “Let It Go” from memory is a beautiful and wonderful and magical thing. Even people who don’t like Disney Princessesembrace Elsa: she’s a Queen! But Anna is my favorite. “Hang in there, Joan.” This is everything I need to know about Anna. Joan of Arc was a teenage heroine whose faith was her greatest strength and her greatest weakness. Anna is naive. She trusts everyone immediately and implicitly: Hans, Elsa, Kristoff, she expects the best regardless of their history or lack thereof. She believes in True Love (™) and stubbornly ignores chemistry (and an entire song sung by hairy rocks) in favor of perceived destiny. She leaps without looking. She loves without pause. She makes a progression of more and more impulsive decisions but they all work out in the end because Disney. Anna is imaginative. She has to be. Left alone in a castle with a hundred rooms and no one but servants (who aren’t allowed to say anything beyond their station) to talk to she has to make up friends and adventures for herself. It’s clear she has a relationship with each of the pictures in the gallery and likely all the armor in the hall. She has nothing to do but imagine how it might be if it was different. If the doors opened. If the rooms were full. If her sister would come out to play. After all these years Elsa is still her best friend, her only friend who talks back, or at least could. Anna falls for Hans because he is exactly what she has always dreamed of. She falls for Kristoff because he sings a duet with his reindeer and voices both parts. Hans empathically understanding her (“We finish each other’s –” “Sandwiches!” “That’s what I was going to say!”) is an act. Kristoff gets her. He was also raised away from the village. He has conversations with things that can’t talk back. He thinks a talking snowman is normal because he’s friends with talking rocks. Hans underestimates Anna. He takes advantage of her loneliness but he mistakes her longing for desperation. Anna is neither desperate for love nor dumb for following Elsa. Anna isn’t afraid of Elsa’s magic because Elsa is, and always has been, her hero. Alone and ignored Anna might have grown resentful of the shut door but she didn’t. She loves her sister. And that love manifests itself in faith. “I knew you could do it,” Anna tells Elsa when she breaks the spell on the kingdom. “You’re no match for Elsa,” she tells Hans when his betrayal is revealed. “That’s okay, you can just unfreeze it,” she tells Elsa when she finds her ice palace and explains what’s happened to Arendelle. “But it’ll be fine. Elsa will thaw it,” she tells Kristoff when he points out that everything everywhere is frozen. “Elsa’s not dangerous. I’ll bring her back and I’ll make this right,” she tells the kingdom when she leaves on her quest for the queen. “She’s my sister; she would never hurt me,” she tells Hans when he says he’s worried she shouldn’t go. “Hang in there, Joan.” Joan of Arc was a young woman with magic powers who was shunned and hunted. Like Elsa. “Catch me!” Anna is my favorite but Elsa is Anna’s favorite and to pit them against each other is to ignore the story. They are both heroines worthy of love and attention.